Glastonbury’s LGBTQ+ Space Is Still Soaring After Ten Colourful Years
Outside NYC Downlow in 2008. Photo by Peter Podworkski via Block9

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Glastonbury’s LGBTQ+ Space Is Still Soaring After Ten Colourful Years

We spoke to the Block9 area's creators about a decade of running the festival's subversive, sweaty and inclusive installations.
Hannah Ewens
London, GB

Glastonbury excels in creating lawless spots where you lose all track of your mates, the odd item of clothing, time, space – that's part and parcel of the escapism that festivals promised so many are now starting to forget. But NYC Downlow is the only surreal place on site where you'll look at your phone and realise you've spent five hours ripping your fishnets dropping the best-worst moves of your life with a drag queen to acid house while a crew of go-go-boy butchers get into some friendly power play around you. It's an LGBTQ+ space just a 20-minute wankered stroll from the crowd-pleasing mediocrity of the Pyramid stage but it couldn't feel further from listening to Ed Sheeran croon on while some sixth formers try to sell you a balloon of NOS for a fiver.

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"I'll always remember the first year I went to Downlow because it was the year I spoke to my closest friends about being queer," says Rose, 24. "We all dragged in leather and lace and for some reason Florence Welch was there singing with a drag troupe. It was fucking mad and freeing." Charlie, 31, said: "I swear to God this one year Mick fucking Jagger showed up and spent the whole time drinking whiskey with some drag queens behind the DJ booth and requesting that they only play 'Welcome to the Pleasure Dome' on repeat. That said, it could just be some other wrinkly old dude in a paisley shirt and flares. I was too wasted to see properly."

This year, NYC Downlow and importantly, Block9 – the creative team behind Downlow and other nearby subversive installations at Glastonbury – is celebrating its tenth anniversary. Downlow was the first LGBTQ+ space at Glastonbury festival and now is colloquially known as the best, albeit temporal, gay club in the country. Though not designed for straight people, it's an inclusive space and allies are welcome. Block9's Gideon Berger and Stephen Gallagher came up with it in 2007 because, pretty simply, there was nothing better available.

NYC Downlow in 2014. Photo by Kamil Kustosz

"That's why the Downlow is so great," Gideon tells me. "It was the first posse of people that built the first fucking gay temporary autonomous reality with no rules; a 24-hour sound system lunatic thing. It didn't exist before we did it at UK festivals." Still, it's extremely rare to find a specific LGBTQ+ space at British festivals, which is part of what makes Downlow so special.

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"I'd been living in San Francisco, misbehaving in the late 90s to early 00s, and I went to Burning Man quite a lot, seeing how the posses of really sound politically switched-on homos from Los Angeles, New York and Chicago were getting together in terms of building art camps and basically getting together and doing really cool shit," Gideon continues. "I thought: Well why the fuck are UK festivals so straight? Where's the quality house? Where's the funk, soul, the good homos? I later met Steve and he said, 'Let's fucking do a gay bar at Glastonbury'. The rest is history."

The first year was a "communist pipe dream" with everyone volunteering time and labour to see the vision through. "We didn't know if anyone was going to come and it pissed with rain so it was really, really difficult to operate in the mud. But the moment we opened outdoors we already had like 300 people queuing to get in."

From there the vision expanded. In 2009, Block9 – who have a vision for radical set and environment designs incorporating music – took on their own field at Glastonbury and thought up other installations. The following year, the ridiculously popular London Underground was erected – a six-storey, semi-destroyed London tower block with a derailed Northern tube line train smashing right into it. "With that we wanted to showcase London sound systems and pay homage to all the electronic and analogue music coming from the capital and the fact it's such an amazing melting pot for different cultures and types of music," explains Gideon. In 2011, they had to upgrade to a larger field again. Since then, off-site, Block9 have worked on projects from Lana Del Rey's stage to the production design for Gorillaz' Demon Dayz festival in Margate.

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Said Northern Line train carriage, at the London Underground installation in 2011. Photo by Peter Podworkski

Every year the Block9 space gets more expansive, more interesting and more wild, but Gideon and Stephen say its core values remain the same. They always look to raise cash for noteworthy causes – in their decade of existence, Block9 has raised over £60,000 for causes from human rights to refugee crisis aid. Gideon also says that those core values include the promotion of homosexuality and queerness. "You know the stuff Robert Mugabe and Putin are so worried about? That's what we do," he says, laughing. Although it's only NYC Downlow that's specifically a LGBTQ+ space, all of the installations and clubs embody a similar political spirit.

The installations and area's otherworldly, strange design is conceptually intrinsic to the digressive fun had there. "When you play with building temporary realities and building temporary environments, you're sort of in the realm of playing with perception," Stephen says. "That is empowering but it also makes you question the reality that is your day to day. As a person walking into this space you're forced to engage with what's going on around you because it's fucking scary or slightly antagonistic or it means you engage with other people which means invariably everyone else ends up having a better time."

Downlow and its flaming, distressed buildings, its sweaty, dark dancefloor, its radical queer space has brought plenty of people together. Drag DJ and performer John Sizzle has been coming to Glastonbury for the past decade, principally drawn by Downlow. "One of the best years was Shirley Bassey," he remembers. "Us Downlow transvestites were filthy, covered with mud and we all left in ballgowns to go and see her. The BBC cameras kept panning to us in the crowd, these hot messes. We had a massive fight about who was going to be the best Shirley Bassey between 15 of us, covered in mud, almost weeping. We always get into some sort of trouble every time."

Despite the fun, last Glastonbury was a little different, more defiant, for Downlow. Forever to go down among young people as the worst year in recent history, 2016 had brought Brexit, Trump winning the election, the tragic and horrific Orlando shooting targeting the city's largely Latinx LGBTQ+ population. In the face of adversity, a queer-friendly space can take on fresh importance and feeling. This tenth anniversary will be celebratory in a different way.

"Theresa May has been decimated in the last General Election and there is fresh wind in the sails of the left in the UK," says Gideon, very obviously pleased. Of course, elsewhere at the festival, Corbs is introducing Run the Jewels. "There's amazingly high spirits in Jeremy Corbyn, it's a fucking delight getting behind him. We have some excellent guerrilla political surprises up our sleeves for the general public so watch this space. It's going to be the biggest year yet."

You can find Hannah on Twitter.